Recalling the Hunger Winter

Evoking famine memory beyond the national

Bibliographic Data

ID12905409
AuthorsIngrid J J De Zwarte (0000-0003-3675-5635, Wageningen University & Research, corresponding author), Lindsay Janssen (0000-0002-0098-7939, Radboud University Nijmegen)
Year2022
Volume17
Issue2
Pages213-227
Publication date2022-10-07
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueMemory Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1750-6980 • E-ISSN: 1750-6999
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/17506980221126603
OpenAlexW4303411454
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited32

This article seeks to demonstrate how hunger legacies function as connecting vectors in later times. By investigating the comparative uses of memory in Dutch newspapers in the period 1945–1995, it reveals how recollections of the Dutch ‘Hunger Winter’ of 1944–1945 were evoked to make sense of current episodes of hunger, as well as to stimulate political and societal engagement among readers with famines across the world. In so doing, the article shows how memories of the Dutch famine were placed in larger transnational discourses of suffering, experienced by other oppressed and war-stricken communities, ultimately making the Hunger Winter a benchmark for understanding famine, deprivation and humanitarianism. Crucially, this article stresses the need to move beyond national paradigms in the study of famine memory, thereby allowing for a better understanding of the transnational workings of memory

Aesthetics · Famine · Media studies · Newspaper · Period (music · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · History · Italian Fascism and Post-war Society · Law · Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration · Oral History, Memory, Narrative Analysis